


reborn

by anarchywrites



Category: Dungeons and Dragons - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:33:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23060062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchywrites/pseuds/anarchywrites
Summary: Carol has some stuff to work through.
Kudos: 3





	reborn

She never was one to believe in hopes or dreams, but she remembered what it was like, dragging what could be only loosely called a body behind her. She remembered what it was like to feel the adrenaline, the kind that pumped through your body that made it easy to deal with hurt but hard to rationalize what was happening. She was ten years old when it happened, but the scars would be etched into Carol’s mind until the day she drew her last breath.

She died when she was ten years old, she could say, and she would say that – that was the end of an era, the end of the life she lead for so long, and the end of an innocence Carol never could regain. She never felt that childlike wonder ever again, the kind that would bring with each day a new adventure. Indeed, she only looked at these days as a means to an end. Each day was a breath, a privilege to live, a stroke of luck on her part. Carol was not living. She was surviving, and barely even doing that.

In between shots of the medicine she found after dragging herself upstairs, she’d have moments of clarity where she reflected on things that happened before. But she realized that much of her memories had been scrubbed to make room for the trauma that had overloaded her consciousness. She could think of nothing of her father or mother, she could only vaguely piece what they looked like. Sometimes, her mother wore her hair in a ponytail. Sometimes, her father had a hat. One of them had to have had freckles, because Carol had freckles. Her aunt had freckles.

A cold rush of air escaped her.

Her aunt.

Carol shot up on the barn’s bench, her eye wide. Where could she be? She left her alone in the mansion – Carol didn’t even think to go back for her. Her aunt was probably dead. Her aunt was dead, because of her.

But as she laid back down, forced to by the stinging that bit her arms and legs, she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

About anything.

Her father? Her mother? They abandoned her. Her aunt? Gone. She was alone, but was that such a bad thing?

Carol sat up again. She swung herself up over the bench’s edge, dusting it off and finally properly seeing the drawers attached to it. Of course, this wasn’t a normal damn bench. This was a workbench. This was her mother’s old lab, where even more forgotten memories of Carol’s infancies laid. Being carried around in a baby sling on her mother’s chest or back as she worked – she could only slightly recall the memory from the smell of pine and metal.

She started to pull the drawers out, searching. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had to find it. She needed to know if in their absence, her parents had left anything to her. And unbeknownst to her and unlisted in their will, they had gifted her their intellect.

It was time to get to work. No one was going to save her. She was going to save herself. She wasn’t going to wait here to die, and she wasn’t going to continue scraping in order to survive. Carol Lewis was going to _live_ again. She was going to breathe and not feel smoke in her lungs again. She was going to walk again. She was going to love again. She was going to find people who wouldn’t leave her, and she would hold onto them tighter than anything else.

Months of on and off work came to a head in simple prosthetics. It was difficult – a long process of trial and error, but she pushed through – of course she pushed through! She was Carol! How could she not push through?

On precariously balanced legs, she stepped out into the sun for the first time in ages – longer than it had taken to drag herself here. She was never allowed outside after her parents left – why would she even want to leave? Here she was, being reminded of why. The sun kissed her skin and warmed her cheeks, and she sighed, stepping out further into the grassy hills. She had no feeling on her legs as she balanced, but falling came with an upside- she felt the individual blades of grass on the fingertips of her good hand, and it made her pupils dilate. She could feel it.

She could _feel._

Carol twisted and fell, her back against the grass and her face up towards the sky. The clouds drifted ever so gently along, and she raised her hands up to them, as if to touch what was so far out of her reach. She knew she couldn’t, but she also knew she didn’t have to. Carol Lewis had been reborn, and right here, right now, is where her new life would begin.

And this time, she was taking control.


End file.
